More memory will definitely speed up rendering, especially if you are using a 64 bit version of Premiere (the last two releases). CUDA-capable card will speed up Mercury engine in Premiere. In addition, all GPU-accelerated filters included with RED 5, such as Lens Flare, will benefit from a beefy graphics card of any brand. We recommend latest cards with more on-card memory.

Thanks Boris - you have a fine staff under you by the way. So you would recommend RAM for rendering and a card to viewing...of course if I could render fast enough my viewing would be real time. I have 16gb in my 2010 12 core and it's maxed out when exporting Red fx. How much RAM would you recommend.

Given the performance in PP and my extensive use of Red, I am considering going back to FCP 7 for my next long project.

Be aware that accelerated "effects" also include Color Correction, Scaling (also on export), Frame Rate conversion, Field Order conversion, Slo-mo, Pulldown and other under-the-hood stuff. So an approved card will speed up just about any project.

Given the continuing presence of FCP7, Red and BCC7 on my system it's likely Premiere is simply too rich for my blood....no that's not it, I actually resent having to plow around $1200 into a 2010 Mac Pro 12 core w. 16gb ram that cost $8K just to use one piece of software. Red runs delicisouly in FCP and so do I . PP has nice features but not worthy of the investment, IMHO.

That's not to say I'm not curious as hell to try my machine with all that added firepower just to know what it feels like.